The lightning, or the Something Else Entirely, was close now. The brightness of it burned Alditha’s eyes to look at, but she wouldn’t turn away, and she wouldn’t step aside. She could feel the energy of it crackle and it made her nose itch. She took a breath in, and the air was warm with the lightning’s touch.
There was a crackle, and a zap, and Alditha blinked hard, unsure what had happened.
When she saw it, she smiled in witchy satisfaction. ‘See? What did I tell you? Something Else Entirely.’
‘You cannot have known that would happen,’ cried Gunkin. ‘You’re just- just- impossible.’
The lightning was still pulsing through the sky, but where it should have touched Alditha and turned her into so much witch-bacon in some sensible boots, it was as if the energy itself had stepped sideways around her, and thudded into the ground a foot to her left, and a foot behind her.
‘I know,’ said Alditha, grinning at him like a mouthful of sugar lumps. ‘Annoying, isn’t it?’
The spot where the lightning had hit exploded in a shower of earth and wood chips.
__________
Old Tom was befuddled. To be fair to him, he was upside-down with his head in the earth and his legs in the air, which is enough to befuddle almost anyone. He’d watched the lightning amble down through the sky, and then suddenly jump the last ten feet, hitting the earth with a whumpf. Then he hadn’t seen anything else, because the whumpf had turned the world on its head and pitched him skyward, landing him back to front with a thud.
Dig, thought Tom. Dig, y’ol’ fool, and dig now.
He dug, using his powerful hands to push the earth away from his face. He did a backward press-up, pushing his legs back until they made contact with the soft ground. When he was standing the right way up again, he used his hat to wipe the soil off his face, and turned round to where the lightning had hit.
There was a crater.
A small crater, no bigger than twice his size, but a crater nevertheless. Old Tom walked up to the lip of earth and peered in.
His eyes widened.
‘Stinky blinkin’ socks,’ he said, almost falling into the hole.
There, at the bottom of the crater, was another orb. Older-looking, not quite so complicated, and covered in earth and the occasional rather surprised worm, but with its lights already blinking. As he watched, the ball sprouted wings, and shot up out of the hole, flying fast and high till it was out of sight.
‘Another one,’ Old Tom said in disbelief. ‘I’ve blinkin’ lost another one.’ He flung his hat onto the ground and stamped on it. ‘Wretched bloomin’ blinkin’...’ he yelled and trampled the hat into the mud.
__________
‘Easy now,’ whispered Alditha to Gunkin. ‘Don’t alarm it.’
Gunkin looked sideways at it. ‘Alarm it?’ he hissed. ‘What in the name of Sagar’s Satchel is it?’
Alditha grinned, not taking her eyes off the sphere that had flown up out of the hole the lightning had made. ‘Something Else Entirely,’ she whispered.
‘Oh, deep. That’s being a witch, is it?’ said Gunkin. ‘Saying something vague and meaningless and grinning at the same time? I can see why everyone’s scared of you lot.’
Alditha raised an eyebrow. ‘Anyone ever told you you’re an annoying goblin?’
‘Most people, since you mention it.’
‘Good. Haven’t taken the hint yet then, have you?’
‘I’m working on it...’
Alditha shook her head. Then, ignoring Gunkin’s response, she turned her full attention to the sphere. She was unsure about it, and, strangely, felt out of her depth.
She reached out a hand, gently, and whispered: ‘Broom, broom, come to me; slowly mind—don’t fret or flee.’
Slowly, like a cat stalking a mouse, her broom inched forward to her hand. Something told her she might need it close by. A witch’s broomstick had many uses beyond that of aerial transportation, and the orb looked unpredictable.
‘Hello,’ she whispered to the sphere. ‘You’re not from round here, are you? What are you doing here? Eh? Tell Aunty Alditha. Where are you-’
‘Ass... ass... assssssimilated. Language assimilated. Extrapolations now possible,’ said the sphere suddenly, its voice low and tinny.
‘Gooooood,’ said Alditha, nodding at it. ‘Now maybe we can have a proper chat, eh? I’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Assessing,’ said the sphere, followed by some clicks and whistles. ‘Culture—primitive. Largely pre-industrial. Evidence of mytho-folkloric influences and sigma energy. Incantation suggests sigma energy regarded as ma-ma-ma-magic. Conclusion: the Sleepers have not awoken. Objective one—wake the Sleepers.’
With that, the sphere shot out its wings and zipped straight up into the sky.
‘What the-?’ said Gunkin. ‘Get after it.’
‘No point, believe me,’ said Alditha, staring after it. ‘Absolutely fascinating, though,’ she murmured, more to herself than to the goblin. Then she widened her eyes. ‘Wonder who the Sleepers are.’
__________
‘Y’see?’ screeched Harper, sticking a wing up into the sky. ‘It’s the end of the world, I tell you. That mad wizard’s finally done it. He’s gone and killed us all.’
The Green Man looked up at the fingers of lightning strolling slowly down towards the ground. ‘It’s odd, that’s certainly true,’ he said.
‘Odd?’ said Harper. ‘It’s scrawkingly terrifying, that’s what it is.’
‘Well,’ said the Green Man, ‘if it helps unruffle your feathers, it looks like none of the lightning bolts are due to hit us. And it’s rather sporting, going at that speed. Gives people plenty of time to get out of the way, you know?’
‘Not the lightning,’ Harper flurried. ‘Who cares about the lightning? Lightning’s normal. It’s that I’m worried about.’
The Green Man looked. Then he coughed, just a little. ‘Yes. Erm...forgive me Harper, dear friend, but you do appear to be pointing at the lightning.’
But he wasn’t. What Harper could see was huge—it filled the sky, on all sides of the lightning. It was blackness, but it was full of horrors—seething off-white tendrils danced, looking for ways to come down and kill them all. Beetle-creatures the size of fields scuttled across the sky on legs that looked hard and darkly armoured, their mouths pouring, roaring threats to the world below. Hideous pink-brown faceless snakes slithered around the clouds, writhing blind, gaping maws ready to suck the air from the Garden
Harper closed his big eyes and tried to think sensibly.
Maybe you’re just dreaming.
Maybe you’re just dreaming.
Maybe you’re just dreaming.
He opened his eyes again, and one of the snake things oozed its way past a particularly fluffy cloud.
Nope—not bloomin’ dreaming. Waaaaargh.
Calm down, Harper. Calm down.
Whaddayou mean, calm down? he argued with himself. The sky’s full of monsters.
Is it?
Wait—what?
Maybe it’s like when you lose your way, and you see...things.
Harper squinted at the Green Man. ‘You can’t see them, can you?’ he pleaded. ‘I mean, what do you see?’
The Green Man frowned. ‘I see some bolts of quite slow lightning, heading towards the ground. As I say, really quite odd.’
‘And...erm...that’s it?’ Harper asked, feeling sick. ‘Is it?’
The Green Man squinted at the sky. ‘Yyyyyes,’ he said eventually. ‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘No horrible, squirmy roots and monsters and...stuff?’
The Green Man frowned. ‘Nnnno,’ he said, checking the sky again, then blinking at his friend. ‘No, I’m fairly sure I would have noticed that.’
‘That’s it, then,’ cried Harper, waving his wings about. ‘I’ve gone bonkers. Doolally tap. Up the spout and round the twist and nutty as a squirrel’s sandwich-box. Oh, what a terrible fate for a young owl in the prime of his wossn
ame.’ He hid his eyes with his wing. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t look at me, I don’t want your pity, old friend. I’ll just go off somewhere on me own and never look up again, that’s all. Don’t trouble yourself.’
The Green Man made soothing noises at his dramatic friend. ‘Would you like a marshmallow?’ he offered. ‘Everything looks better after a marshmallow, I always find.’
‘No no,’ wailed Harper. ‘The sky’s never done anything to hurt me, and now it’s crawling with monsters. Goodness only knows what I’ll see if I look at a marshmallow. For all I know, it might grow teeth and try and bite me beak off. Oh, that it should come to this,’ he said. ‘Struck down in me prime by that wretched wizard, flying his teacups around the place and turning me loopy.’
‘I meant to say,’ said the Green Man, ‘you were wrong about that, you know. Had nothing to do with Skoros in the end—there was one of those...girl things in the teacup. Said her name was Celeste. Quite nice, really, in an oddish way. You should have seen what she did to the wizard when he came riding up to see what all the fuss was about, you’d have laughed yourself hooty.’
‘A girl?’ said Harper, peeping over his wing. ‘A girl? Came out of that thing?’
‘Mmm. Yes. Celeste, she said her name was. Kept asking if I’d seen any orbs about the place. Don’t know what all that was about. As I say, oddish girl, but quite nice in her way.’
‘Orbs?’ demanded the owl suddenly. ‘Orbs like metal balls with wings on? Orbs like metal balls with wings on that fly like Big Red himself was after ’em and don’t think twice about dumping a humble well-meaning owl on his head in the depths of Blue Dragon Forest?’
The Green Man shrugged—he was a living tree, so it was a complicated, impressive, rather noisy business. ‘Orbs was all she said.’
Harper came out of hiding and fluttered his wings. ‘D’you know what this means?’ he almost yelled.
‘Not a clue, old chap. Seems to be that sort of day.’
‘Means I haven’t gone bonkers after all. For some reason, this Celeste -’ He almost spat the name. ‘-has sent the orb ahead. First the orb. Then the teacup. Now the lightning and the sky full of monsters. For some reason, you can’t see the monsters—s’probably camouflage. Yes, that’s it—camouflage, like caterpillars that look like leaves. But I...for some reason, I’m immune to the camouflage. S’probably my highly developed brain, to be fair. I mean, I speak as I find, and you know I think you’re an excellent fellow, one of the finest, but after all, when all’s said and done, you’re a tree.’
The Green Man pursed his lips, but said nothing.
‘D’you know what else this means?’ asked Harper, almost whispering, in case anyone except the Green Man was listening.
‘That you owe Skoros an apology?’
‘No,’ said Harper, fixing the Green Man with an enormous owlish gaze. ‘It means the Garden—my Garden—is being invaded.’
6
‘Of all the useless-’ CLANG.
‘Stupid-’ CLANG.
‘Waste of rivet-’ CLANG.
‘Creations.’ THUNK.
Skoros paused, realizing his sledgehammer had gone through the bronze plating of the Horse 2.0’s chest. He nodded, sniffed. ‘No more than you deserve, you wretched disappointment-engine.’
He had only decided to try the Horse out so that he could intimidate the Green Man and whoever or whatever owned the teacup. Instead he had ended up humiliated in front of that walking tree and what looked like a twelve-year-old girl with violet eyes.
She’ll pay, he promised himself. One day soon, she’ll pay for my embarrassment.
Her not being intimidated had been bad enough, but the backward-facing journey home on the unstoppable Horse 2.0 had been not only shaming, but painful, too. What was more, the thing had stopped a mile from the castle with steam coming out of its head and oil leaking from a service hatch underneath its tail, and he’d had to drag it up the final stretch of the hill.
She’s so going to pay, he promised.
‘Raark,’ said Razor, flying into the stable and landing on a workbench that had long ago replaced the feeding trough in the stable. ‘How’d it go, O Dark Lord Of All You Survey?’ he asked. ‘Strike fear in his old wooden heart, did you? Take the teacup by storm? Grind the noses of the lesser creatures into the dirt, eh? Raaark.’
Skoros scowled at the raven. Did Razor know? Had he seen his humiliation?
‘I am considering my actions,’ he said, daring the bird to react.
Razor fixed him with piercing eyes. He blinked. ‘Raaark,’ he muttered, in a tone that said ‘I’m saying absolutely nothing about that. Nothing at all.’
Skoros nodded. ‘The teacup had an occupant,’ he explained. ‘A girl.’
Razor clamped his silver beak tightly shut.
‘She’s not from around here,’ Skoros explained. ‘She’s from a whole civilization of people like me. Can you imagine that?’
Razor’s beak was, if anything, even more closed than it had been before.
‘She said she hadn’t seen something like this in hundreds of years,’ he mused, throwing a look of accusation at the Horse 2.0. ‘Just imagine what I could do with a mind like that.’
Razor’s beak opened—and then closed again.
‘I went about it the wrong way,’ Skoros admitted, pretty much forgetting Razor was there at all. ‘Trying to intimidate her with this.’ He kicked the Horse 2.0 hard in the fetlock, and it fell forward in a clanking pile of metal. ‘I need to impress her. To be her friend.’
‘Raaark,’ said Razor, with his head tilted to the side. ‘What if she doesn’t wanna be your friend, O Dark Lord Of All You Survey?’
Skoros stared at him like a gravestone. ‘Then the castle has plenty of dungeons,’ he said, quietly. ‘What in the name of-?’
Something had caught his eye through the open stable door. He rushed past Razor to look out. There in the sky were what looked like lightning bolts, moving slowly down towards the ground. Skoros narrowed his eyes at them.
‘This’ll be her work, I’m sure of it,’ he muttered, watching the streaks of energy move. He stood in the stable doorway for a moment, then rubbed the place where his beard should have been, thinking.
Anyone who could interfere with the Horse 2.0 is either cleverer or more powerful than anyone else on this planet, he thought. Like me. Now this...
He made a decision. ‘Razor, go—prime the machine. I’ll check the wood is available, feed the furnace and channel the power to the central systems. I need a lot of juice, and I need it now. I’ll join you soon.’
‘Raark. Why, Lord? What do you have in mind?’
Skoros smiled a thin, razor-wire smile. ‘I intend to release the CyberBats.’
__________
Celeste looked up at the sky and frowned, concentrating on where the lightning was coming from. She pointed her box at the sky and it beeped and blipped for a few seconds.
‘Are you getting this, Alpha?’
There were a few seconds of silence before ‘Affirmative’ came back to her.
‘Speculate on the cause of the phenomenon.’
A shorter pause.
‘There are 72,894,103 possible causes. Cause one-’
‘Narrow parameters to include likelihood of orb involvement.’
‘There are twelve possible causes including likelihood-’
‘Thought so.’ Celeste did her best not to get excited. Still, the orbs must have found something of interest or they wouldn’t have done this, not yet. A grin twitched at the edges of her mouth. ‘Log bearing and trajectory of orbs on departure,’ she told Alpha, ‘and send me coordinates for likely seeker-beam drop-points.’ She looked at the beams as they split the sky, spreading like giant spider-legs. Lazy, she chided herself. She’d been relying on Alpha’s calculations too much lately, treating the bio-mech like a glorified calculator. ‘Cancel co-ordinate request,’ she said, ‘I can work it out myself.’
There was a long moment of silen
ce, before Alpha said ‘I should think so too.’
Celeste grinned properly at that, did some complicated mathematics in her head, told her bio-mech to still log the departure bearings for the orbs, and set off for the place where she’d worked out the nearest seeker-beam would drop to the ground.
Wish I’d brought my hoverscoot, she thought as she traipsed over the ground of the Garden, keeping the seeker-beams in sight every second.
__________
In the forest, Skoros drew himself up, as though he’d been about to tread in something nasty.
‘Witch,’ he sneered.
Alditha stopped in her tracks and clicked the heels of her boots together.
‘Well, bless my broomstick, if it isn’t Lord Skoros himself,’ she said, touching the brim of her hat lightly, unaffected by the wizard’s sudden appearance.
‘What are you doing here?’ the wizard demanded sourly.
Alditha ignored the question—everyone in the Garden knew that witches went where they pleased. ‘What are you doing here?’ she replied. ‘Didn’t you know that cutting down trees at this rate is a crime against the forest?’
‘Since it’s my forest, it would only be a crime if I wasn’t the one doing it,’ he spat back. ‘Crime against the forest, indeed—what do you think? Are the trees going to put me on trial?’ he scoffed.
Alditha said nothing.
‘Gunkin, get this lot fed into the furnace immediately, then come back and cut down another acre.’ Skoros stared at Alditha, daring her to contradict him.
Alditha still said nothing.
Skoros grunted in satisfaction, turned on his heel and hurried back into the castle. Gunkin shrugged at Alditha, picked up a big tree under each arm, and began dragging them after his master.
__________
Left alone with the trees, Alditha pursed her lips. There were battles worth winning, she knew, and battles worth losing. Sometimes, the words you wanted to say would only prolong the argument.
Sometimes it was better to say nothing, and just do something. She climbed onto her broomstick and took off, flying up and up, just above the level of the treetops. Then she nodded, her mind made up.
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